


Second Grade

by mind_and_malady



Series: Maybe We're From the Same Star [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Elementary School, Fluff, Gen, Off-Screen Fist Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4997668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mind_and_malady/pseuds/mind_and_malady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Nick start second grade together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Grade

When second grade rolls around, Sam and Nick are in the same class. They’re both delighted, and the last two weeks of summer are filled with sleepovers and long days of school shopping and wondering what the next year will be like.

Ruby is in their class too, so on the first day when they’re asked to pick groups to sit in, she joins them. Their teacher is happy enough to see them all sitting together, and so clearly comfortable already, but the TA is less than pleased, going by the frown on her face.

“That’s Miss Naomi,” Ruby whispers to them, scowling. “She hates me, cause my cousin Aba made a whole buncha trouble for her at the high school -”

“And what’s your name?” Miss Naomi says sweetly, coming up beside Ruby.

Ruby looks up at the woman with a certain level of smug satisfaction. “Ruby.”

She turns narrowed eyes on the two boys, notes that their legs and hands are touching beneath the desks. “And you two?”

“I’m Sam,” Sam answers, with a sweet smile, cheeks dimpling, the picture of a happy child.

Nick waves a hand at her, smiling only a little. “Nick.”

She nods. “Please remember that gossiping is _bad_ , and that you shouldn’t listen to such lies, Sam, Nick.”

When she leaves, Sam sticks his tongue out at her. Ruby beams like he just lit the sun for her. Nick hooks his foot around Sam’s ankle, and they share twin smiles.

 

* * *

 

Their art teacher is named Ava. She’s gentle, mostly, and seems slightly too twitchy. She asks them to draw someone else in the room. Naturally, Sam and Lucifer end up across from each other.

It’s hard work, but the both enjoy it. Sam’s always enjoyed drawing, has countless stacks of pictures in his room, and he’d been teaching Lucifer all about the joys of art since they’d met. It’s still a child’s work - they’re hardly prodiges - but there’s potential budding underneath the errant lines and scribbles.

Sam draws Lucifer in a blanket fort, sleeping. Lucifer draws Sam with a notebook in his lap and flowers in his hair, and when the teacher comes by to grade them, she smiles. They give each other their artwork to keep.

 

* * *

 

On the playground, they’re kings. Ruby, Meg, and Lilith join them, and they make war together.

There are half-hour battles, played on horseback and on foot, with imaginary swords. They are rulers of opposing kingdoms, two kings fighting triplet queens. They fight for land, for power, for gold. When their class delves briefly into the history of the Middle Ages, they incorporate it, memorize battles and bring them to life.

(It’s the only history unit that Meg passes with something higher than a C, and she thanks them by making a treaty for the climbing wall.)

On rainy days, the girls cause havoc in the gym. The beat every other team they fight in basketball. There are relay runs and sprints, and they win those too. They draw blood when the adults make the mistake of choosing floor hockey for the day’s sport.

Sam and Nick hole up in the back corner of the library instead, at the table pushed against two windows that open up to a courtyard. They do homework and talk, draw pictures together and laugh quietly. Some days Sam will have a book he absolutely needs to finish, and he’ll entertain Nick by reading it aloud.

 

* * *

 

Nick likes cursive. He likes the elongated look of the letters, the elegance. They’re pretty. Ruby thinks they’re too girly, too fancy for her rough-and-tumble style, but he likes them. Sam just shrugs, and says that Dean told him they’ll never be required to use cursive anyways, so using it is a personal choice.

Nick likes the way Sam just gives facts instead of opinions sometimes. Sometimes it makes arguments worse, sometimes it diffuses them altogether, but Sam likes giving out the facts, and Nick likes that, too.

 

* * *

 

“Sam, can I speak with you?”

Miss Naomi seems calm, even polite. Sam still cringes, and the classroom goes eerily silent. Nick reaches out and touches his arm as he gets up, and Sam offers him a small smile. Ruby pumps her fist as encouragement, and Sam laughs a little bit.

When he comes back in, pale as snow with wide, shining eyes, Naomi comes in right behind him. She hands a piece of paper to the teacher, who reads it with wide eyes, but then nods.

Sam starts packing up his things, and Nick whispers, “Sam?”

“Later,” he whispers back, and then Naomi is leading him out of the classroom.

When Nick gets home, he finds Michael being screamed at by Father. It’s a full on tirade, with the red face and the shaking of fists and everything. Michael has bruises blooming on his cheek, his eye.

“Micah?” Nick asks, voice high, slightly reedy. He’s been worrying ever since Sam left school.

“Explain to him what you did,” Father says sternly. He crosses his arms, glaring down at Michael, who hangs his head.

“I got in a fight with Dean,” he mumbles. “Just an argument, but it escalated and - and - oh God,” Michael buries his face in his hands.

Father just taps his foot. “All of it, Michael.”

Nick watches, close to horrified, as Michael lifts red-rimmed eyes to Nick’s. “I called him some really awful names, Nick, and then - then he punched me, and I stopped thinking, and - and I hit him back. A lot.”

Nick’s eyes fall to his brother’s hands, bloody and scabbed. Father makes a growly type of noise. “You nearly broke your own hands beating him, Michael! More to the point, the boy needed eighteen stitches and you broke his collarbone! Do you have any idea how grounded you are? Do you know how lucky you are this didn’t happen at school? You could’ve been _expelled_. They still might expel you anyway for being a threat to the student body! And you better hope the Winchesters don’t rightfully press charges against you!”

Quietly, Michael starts to cry. Nick lifts a hand to his own face, finds tears there. “Micah,” he says, voice small, but then he stops. What’s he supposed to say, or do? Does this mean - Is he going to lose _Sam_ because of this? Dread floods him from head to toe, leaves him frozen.

Father sighs heavily. “Go to your room, Nick. I need to continue this conversation.”

Nick flees. He shuts the door to his room and locks it, hastily rubbing the tears from his face. He ditches his backpack on his bed, before going into the bathroom that separates his room from Michael’s. He moves through it into Michael’s room, and then slips out Michael’s door without a sound. Carefully, Nick creeps around the living room, unseen as he sneaks into the kitchen.

He steps into the sunroom silently, shuts the door behind him with the utmost care. Then he opens the outside door, shuts that, and then he’s off like a shot, running his normal route to Sam’s house.

When he gets there, red-faced and panting, eyes stinging, Mrs. Winchester opens the door. She looks extremely tired. “Nick,” she says, slightly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I - Sam,” he says. “Gotta talk to Sam.” He slips under her arms and is halfway up the stairs before she can even get his name out of her mouth.

“Wait, Nick -”

Nick knocks on the door to Sam’s room, ignoring her. Sam says _yeah?_ in a very small voice, and Nick slips into the room.

“Sammy,” he starts, and Sam sits bolt upright.

“Nick,” he says, scrambling off his bed, grabbing at his friend, hugging him but then pushing him away. “Nick, no, you need to go before - before Dean sees you, he’s so mad at your brother, he’s been crying and saying all sorts of things and he’s all beat up, you gotta go, he’s so _mad_ -”

“That’s why I’m staying,” Nick says firmly, reaching back out to snag his friend in a hug. “I don’t care if they hate each other now, I’m still your best friend, I don’t _care_ if he’ll beat me up. ‘M not gonna leave you alone, you hate being alone.”

Sam clings to him, and they’re both caught unaware by Mrs. Winchester opening the door. They separate to face her, but Nick keeps hold of Sam’s hand, and there’s a possessiveness and a protectiveness on his face that does not belong on a child.

“Sam?” she asks, one eyebrow lifted in question.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Sam says, nodding, one hand rubbing at his eyes. “Nick’s just - being a good friend.”

“The best friend,” Nick corrects, and Sam laughs. Nick has a moment of insight. “Mrs. Winchester?”

All he gets is a raised eyebrow, so he keeps going. “Could you...call my Father? He doesn’t know I left.”

Her face goes a little bit slack with surprise, and then she laughs. “Good idea, Nick. I’ll call him.”

“Thank you.”

She shuts the door as she leaves, and the two boys scramble onto the bed, pushing into the corner that meets the walls and holding themselves together with small hands.

“Maybe your dad will let you spend the night,” Sam says quietly. “‘S a Friday after all.”

Nick nods. “Maybe. I hope so.”

There’s a span of silence where Sam puts his head on Nick’s shoulder, and Nick put his face in Sam’s hair. “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m never gonna hurt you like that. I promise.”

“I won’t hurt you like that either. Never.”

The normally chatty boys end up only talking occasionally. Nick is allowed to spend the night, borrows Sam’s pajamas. They sleep close together, curled up like cats.

“I love you,” Nick breathes into the dark. He knows that he doesn’t know what love really is yet, he’s been told that he’s too young to know often enough, but he thinks it feels like this. Warm fuzziness and comfort, like a stuffed animal or a favorite pillow. Something familiar and safe and nice and good.

“I love you too,” Sam answers, yawning, pressing a little closer. Both their heads hurt from crying and stress and the anxiety of being forced to separate, but they’re comfortable wrapped in their bubble.

 

* * *

 

Dean and Michael do not talk anymore. No charges are pressed, he isn’t expelled, but it’s suddenly understood by the system that they aren’t to be placed in the same class without an alternative.

Sam and Nick, by that same line of thinking, are also separated. But this doesn’t bother them. They play on playgrounds with each other and the girls, do homework together in the library, meet up after school, spend whole weekends at each other’s houses.

It’s not the same as it was before. But it’s still something, so Sam and Nick take comfort in that. Dean and Michael watch them with bitterness and jealousy and a vague hope that maybe someday, they can have that back.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sam and Nick are 8, Dean and Michael are 12.  
> Don't give up hope for the Dean/Michael relationship. They are not, surprisingly, a lost cause.


End file.
